Text: Matthew 3: Theme: For our identity to be complete, we need to know that we
are. God's beloved and God is pleased with us. A Blessed Identity. We haven't ...
Text: Matthew 3: Theme: For our identity to be complete, we need to know that we are God’s beloved and God is pleased with us. A Blessed Identity We haven’t made a video since our gardening project last April in part because I kept hoping to make a gardening video that documented the results of our plant project and it never fit with the lesson of the day. Just to let you all know. The loved plants lived, the plants that were cast into the outer darkness of the hallway did not even after I took them home and tried to revive them. The first lesson being that if you want to live and bear fruit, you need a community around you. But the second lesson was that we did not get watermelon even though we thought we planted watermelon seeds. Sometimes the harvest brings surprises and we grew some weird squash that tasted pretty good. But for whatever reason, the lectionary didn’t give us any Biblical texts about surprises in the harvest so we were unable to finish part two of our gardening video. But today is the perfect day to make a new video for our website with the purpose of saying hello to website visitor’s as well as letting the visitor’s know who we are. The Gospel lesson for today identifies us as God’s beloved children. So I want you to get ready to say “hello” to the iPad and say, “My name is Tony and I am a child of God you can also tell
us something quirky about you if you want. For example, I could say, “my name is Lori and I am a child of God. I love going to church on cold dreary mornings. Or, “I’m Lynn, I am a child of God and I love being a Lutheran. You can say anything that describes your quirkiness, assuming you have some quirkiness. If you don’t, just say, “I’m John and I am a child of God”. It’s good to announce to the world who we are, we are God’s beloved and we may also have some quirks that will affect how we relate to the world. It’s this kind of naming, this kind of identifying that connects to the story of Jesus’ baptism. All of the Gospels carry the story of Jesus’ baptism. It is clear from a reading of the text that the Gospel writer of Matthew uses the story from Mark as a kind of baseline. It’s as if he said, “okay, I agree with how Mark wrote it so I’m just going to copy that”. But the Gospel of Mark was written for a primarily Gentile audience and the Gospel of Matthew was written for a primarily Jewish audience and so there is a wee problem in the text for Matthews’ community. Why is Jesus, who is sinless, being baptized by John? This is a problem for the Gospel writer of Matthew and this continues to be a problem for some churches today.
If we look at baptism as the moment when all of our sins are forgiven and our life begins anew, then it is curious that Jesus, who was without sin, needed to be baptized by John. If baptism is about our sins being forgiven and being given a new life, why do we baptize infants who are clearly without sin? I think these are good questions and to be honest, if we take all of the Biblical references regarding Baptism they are fairly equally divided between infant baptism and believer baptism. Being a Lutheran Church we are most comfortable or used to the idea of infant baptism but was anyone here baptized as a teenager or an adult? Anyone baptized in a river by the “wetter the better” crowd? Baptism isn’t just a ten minute rite in a worship service, there is so much that goes with it. One of the great messages that comes through with the Baptism of Jesus is that God’s baptismal pronouncement on Jesus as God’s beloved child applies to everyone. However it is that we know ourselves, whether we are quirky or not, whether we have been officially baptized or not, as followers of Christ we are most decidedly and assuredly God’s beloved and we bring delight to God. John baptized Jesus to help him recognize and embrace his new identity. I believe that Jesus knew from very early on that he had a
special ministry. He studied the ancient texts, he engaged the teachers in the Temple, we can believe he took every opportunity to discern how he was supposed to begin his ministry. Then one day when he was thirty years old he closed up the carpenter shop handed down to him by Joseph and set off for the river Jordon. Think of how many of us have set off in some way to mark a change in our lives. Maybe we remember the change we made from adolescence into adulthood. Maybe we remember a failed career attempt that led to a better vocational opportunity. We can identify a way of life that wasn’t working for us to a way of life that held for us tremendous opportunity. That’s rather like what Jesus did when he set off for the river Jordon. He was ready, ready to do something new. His baptism by John gave him the very confirmation he and his future followers needed. Indeed this is the beloved Son of God. This is our first opportunity to take his life seriously as we craft, create, or imagine our own lives. John baptized Jesus not to absolve him of his sins but to give affirm his identity as God’s child and to us the followers of Christ, our identity as beloved children of God. This means that our quirkiness, that which makes us unique becomes a gift in God’s service. It means that our lives are ever hopeful,
that with God’s guidance we will be who God created us to be. It means that there is healing, recovery, and restoration from harmful identities that hold us back. As an example, we have a new snow plow guy as the former snow plow guy retired most of his business. Our new guy came in this week to give me an invoice and get his paycheck and he couldn’t wait to tell me that one of his best buds used to be a foreman for our former construction company. In fact, was the foreman for our building project. He said that his friend was just sick over what our former construction company did to us and that if we ever wanted to talk to his buddy, maybe he could help us with think through what happened. If we ever wanted information for a lawsuit, this might be it. But I realized when he was talking how we have moved on. That as followers of Christ our identity is changing that maybe we were the congregation that was taken by said construction company but we are the church that is becoming stronger and wiser in our business practices. God is identifying us as something new. I think about this for our lives. It may be that we saw ourselves by what we could not do. We were the person who tried to regain our health, we were the person who struggled with welcoming people who
are different. We were the person that felt they could not overcome a previous relationship. We were the person who was unsure of what God was calling us to. But through God’s affirmation, our willingness to accept ourselves as God’s beloved child that all changed and we see ourselves differently now. Jesus was a carpenter and then it was time for him to be who God created him to be. The Messiah, Emmanuel, our Redeemer, God’s beloved Son sent to us to let us know that we are also are beloved children of God. It may be January in Wisconsin but that is something to celebrate today. Thanks be to God.
